Monday, November 25, 2013

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “work.” I’ve been
thinking about how we devalue work that isn’t paid, about how we define some
types of work as “frivolous” and ultimately not real work at all; about how we
often assume that real, serious, socially validated work is hard and frequently
unpleasant and how true “passion” for one’s work is, outside of certain narrow
exceptions, immediately suspect.

“Work is work,” I was frequently told growing up. “You’re
not supposed to like your work. That’s why it’s called work.”

I ran across this lovely essay in the New York Times, and
its themes have been ringing in my head ever since. The author of the piece appears
to be a comfortable, financially successful middle-aged man with what would be
considered a “real” job. His son is a 25-year old musician. The author writes
with love and pride and concern about his son’s career path:

“My son Max is a 25-year-old singer and
songwriter who goes by the moniker Dolfish. When my friends ask how his career is
going, I say, “There’s a girl in Indiana with Dolfish tattooed on her arm,”
although that doesn’t exactly answer their question. They know Max was signed
to an indie record label when he was 23. They know he tours a lot and has been
reviewed by some important music sites and even by mainstream magazines. . . What
my friends don’t know is how to measure any of this on the only scale most of
us have. You know, the one the I.R.S. uses. And to be honest, I’m not sure how to
answer the question either. How successful is Max’s music career?”

The author
compares his son’s lifestyle to the 9-5 grind he and his contemporaries lead,
and writes of how he and his middle-aged friends are busy working toward retirement
just to have the lifestyle that his 25-year old son already has—a life
pursuing one’s passion.

He muses: “Maybe
we should have an expression that captures the level of success you’ve achieved
when you do exactly what you love every day.”

This isn’t all
a moony, stardust-in-the-eyes ode to pursuing your passion. The author is
concerned about his son’s future; he worries that the young man won’t be able
to afford a family or health insurance. And the author is writing with genuine
pride of a young man who is doing what he loves, who doesn’t accept parental
handouts, and who does substitute teaching between gigs to make ends meet.

The online
comments on the piece were, predictably, eviscerating (I really do need to stop
reading the reader comments on major news sites).

“Bum,” “parasite,”
“lazy,” were typical epithets thrown at the young musician in question. “Get a
real job” wasn’t the extent of it; many commenters seemed to presume, not only
that being a musician isn’t a real job, but that’s it not even any kind of work
at all. That touring and practicing and writing music isn’t rigorous and
exhausting; that if a creative field is pursued out of love, then it’s all just
fun-and-games. That Max, the young man in the article, really is a lazy bum
playing around and having a good time while real Americans put in their time at
real jobs.

Certainly
there are legitimate financial concerns about pursuing an artistic career in
America, or any type of high-risk creative field. But the vitriol vented online
was something else. There was a deep anger in some of the comments, a
resentment that seemed to stem from a feeling of “I hate my soul-sucking job, therefore
everyone else should hate theirs, too!”

A presumption
that if someone truly loves what they do, it can’t be real work. Even if, you know,
it often is a lot of work (I assume road tours can’t be easy).

Interestingly,
an exception to this presumption occurs if an artistic career makes a lot of
money. As an astute commenter on the original piece said, "How is Max a bum? Is Bruce Springsteen a bum? Is he a bum until he's a member of the 1% The 10%?"

No one would
ever call Bruce Springsteen a bum. Or Bono, or Adele, or anyone who happens to
be making tons of money at their art. Money somehow transmutes everything; that
which was unrespectable becomes worthy. A struggling film graduate is a bum
only until he produces a hit movie, at which point he is suddenly no longer a
bum but worthy of adulation (even though he’d been working hard all along the way). Ditto the
struggling novelist, painter, musician. Struggling anything.

I suppose I’m
sensitive to these ideas now because of where I am in my life: no steady,
full-time job, no paid “work.” I was raised to equate a job’s value with the
money and security it brings; and though I rebelled against that view, I’m
still unable to tear out the roots of that teaching. I chose to embark on a
career path with little security and relatively poor financial compensation
considering the amount of education and training required. I chose a path for
love, not money. My family’s direst warnings came true, and that career (basic
scientific research) collapsed under current funding pressures. And now I sit
at home, writing fiction and pursuing a field with even less financial
compensation than science. A bum twice over, according to some views?*

*Of course,
a number of people would say that I can only do this because I'm "bumming" off of my husband, who trained in a practical field and brings in a more-than-comfortable living. Yes, I'm privileged. Very very privileged. And I still have a weird and complicated relationship with money and self-esteem and value, as I think we all do.